Learning to stand on your own with Isboxer
This is the second guide in my Getting Started with Isboxer series. This guide assumes that you have already read and done everything I talked about in Your first steps as a 6 boxer. We left off with you having to set up your Key Maps as well as your interface. Before you start with this guide you need to have the following things completed:
1. You need to have at least 5 Character Specific Keybinds as well as 6 Isboxer only Keybinds (you need more than that eventually but to start it'll get the job done)
2. You need to go through the Everquest Options and unbind any other key that uses your keybinds. You don't want the game doing weird stuff as we're trying to play!
That's it! Now the next things I am going to teach you are the macros you need to setup and how to get around on your box team. I know that a lot of people end up toying with the Isboxer Alt F follow and failing and the truth is I don't even know how that works. We're going to simplify every single step with these guides!
Now the very first macros you're going to want to make are as follows:
After you've made all of the following macros it's time for you to play around with them a bit in game and see how they all work. First up let's go over my Follow Macros since this is what we'll be using over Isboxer's ingame Follow. I have my Follow macros bound to F6 on my keyboard and every single character on my box team has one except for the tank. Every follow macro targets the tank, my driver.
What I want you to do is space your characters out and hit your Follow Macro that way they all run to the tank and follow him. Of course in order to do this you'll need to have properly set up your keys in Isboxer using my Key Map Wizard Guide. If it doesn't work then make sure your Key Maps are on ingame (the Isboxer command for this is Alt Shift M).
Or what you can do is left click the transparent key that's to the left on the isboxer HUD. A screen shot of what I am talking about is found below, it's one of the things that pops up on your screen when you load Isboxer and arguably the most important 'clicky' aspect of the program.
If your HUD looks the same as what's in the picture above (meaning you have green on the left and the right is blank) it means your Key Maps are ON and your Key Broadcasting is OFF. Which is good for what we're trying to do. If your follow macros still aren't working then something else went wrong - you might not have the Key mapped properly. I would recommend checking my Key Map Troubleshooting Guide.
Moving on - assuming that it either worked for you or you gotta go back and fix it..
The first thing you're going to notice as you start moving around with follow is IT SUCKS!! I'm not even joking either - sometimes you'll get characters circling around you and you'll have to move directly forwards or backwards to "catch" them. It's nuts. The only way to get a better and improved follow is by using Mq2. If you use that you can use /afollow which follows you footsteps exactly and is a billion times better.
An alternative to using /follow altogether is using group call of the hero (Call of the Heroes). It's a level 97 spell that was added in the Call of the Forsaken expansion pack. If you're playing on live you have access to this spell even as Free to Play. Get it - it's fantastic!
Once you've gotten the hang of how /follow works you're going to want to head to a zone that's got light blue enemies. Something that you know you can solo on just one character. We want to do something extremely easy as we're learning how our macros function and the new play style. You're going to be basically learning how to play 6 characters like 1. What I tend to do is think of my entire team like one character. Your tank is the most important character of them all. His gear is the most important, his level is the most important everything revolves around your tank. I shit you not.
The second most important part of your team is your healer. Without him your team is nothing, much like without the tank. Then you have the rest of your team which consists of either DPS, CC or Support classes. If you haven't fully decided on all 6 characters yet and you want some advice I recommend you read my Choosing your Class as a Boxer guide.
Continue reading once you've found a zone to kill in that has light blue enemies that are around your level.
The two Hotbars above are going to be my visual aids for you. You should be familiar with the difference between Character Specific and Isboxer only keybinds by now, if not the pictures above are labeled appropriately for you.
What you're going to do is find a spot to park your boxes. Take control of your tank and run around pulling mobs. Use your Character Specific Keybinds to pull the mobs and build initial agro on them. During this time you do not want to attack on the rest of your team. Once you have agro you'll want to press your Target/Assist Macros. This will get your entire group to assist your tank and your cleric will target your tank. Then you'll want to press your DPS key.
As you could imagine your entire group will now start attacking the same target the tank is attacking. When you need a heal press your heal button and your cleric will heal the tank. If anyone in your group gets agro press your Group heal button and it will heal them.
That's all there is to it! Let me put it in a different format; it's more pleasurable to the eyes.
1. Use your tank to pull enemies. Use the Character Specific binds for your abilities.
2. Once you pull an enemy use your Assist Macros to assist the tank with your DPS and target him with your Cleric
3. If your tank takes damage use your Heal macro to heal him. If your group takes damage use group heal.
4. Pull more and more mobs until you get comfortable with how many you can handle. Then pull more!
That's it! You're boxing!! You've done it! You've accomplished the impossible! You're now in the elite group and I can teach you the secret handshake!! Shhh. That's the secret there is no handshake. Alright, jokes aside... you gotta give me a few jokes here and there, after all I've typed up the entire Isboxer section within a 48hr time frame. Look at all those words!!
We're finished for this part of the guide. The next part of the guide is going to go into more advanced macros with oodles of more information. Things are going to start getting more complex from here on out but I would argue that the hard part is already over. Once you get comfortable controlling your team things are going to be a piece of cake for you. The next part is basically just adding in more and more macros and practicing.
Before I link to the next guide I wanted to put in an F.A.Q of sorts which I can frequently come back to and update as new stuff pops into my head. This will answer any random questions some of you may have while learning this part.
You've got my attention so far with this guide Mr. Almar but how do I know you don't suck at the game? How do I know just botting my characters with Kissassist isn't better than you are? - Good question ol' chap! Well, here is a parse of me doing 565k DPS on one Wizard and 536k on another. Both in Conflagrant gear without TBL AAs. If you like what you see I have a whole page filled with dozens of different parses comparing my DPS to the DPS of Kissassist. Head on over to my Kissassist/Boxing DPS Guide for more information about this topic & to learn more about improving your DPS.
So far throughout your guide you've not taught us how to play any of the classes you use... Can you go into more detail about how to play each class please? - Absolutely! Please keep in mind that writing guides about how to play classes at high end can become inaccurate with just a single patch and they're difficult to maintain in this regard too. I wrote these during the TBL expansion. How to play a Wizard, How to play a Warrior, How to play a Cleric (boxing), How to play a Mage (boxing), How to play an Enchanter (Boxing).
I am not really good at Everquest in general, I don't know what stats to focus on or what type of Augs I should get or even which abilities I should use on my characters. Do you have any non boxing advice that will help me out here? - I sure do! There's a lot to learn in Everquest and it's a shame that there is no ingame compendium that talks about all this stuff. First up, Learn more about Heroic Stats, Next up - if you're reading this past 2/24/18 it means I forgot about adding future guides to this section - please leave a comment and remind me.
What happens if someone else takes damage except the tank? - group heal. You do not switch to the cleric and individually target the person taking damage - instead you keep playing the tank and try to get agro back, fade and group heal.
My healer is a Shaman and your guide hasn't told me how to Slow on him and Heal, wtf? - We're getting to this later in the guide. There's actually two ways to do it, you can sloppily make a Macro and bind it to Numpad 6 or 7 and use that Or you can take my advice later in the guide and setup Hotbar Swaps to take care of it. I'd recommend you wait.
I have an Enchanter and I want to use his CC! - Right now this is adding in much more complexity. To tell you the truth trying to fully utilize and Enchanter's CC capabilities with only Isboxer is extremely difficult. This will need its own very thorough explanation much like the Shaman/Slow situation.
I'm having a bunch of trouble playing still, it's all a bit confusing - do you have any other advice? - I'd seriously recommend you consider Macroquest 2 and do some reading about that. If you'd like to see my What's so good about Macroquest 2 Guide then follow the link provided. I give a bunch of different reasons why the program is great. It makes the entire game less tiring and 'work' feeling.
I'm trying to box a Melee Character and it's just not working for me, do I have to reroll a Caster? - Possibly, trying to box Melee without Macroquest 2 is extremely difficult and I do not recommend it. I talk about why in my Choosing your class as a boxer guide a bit more.
Before continuing to the next guide I highly recommend you play for a few days with your current setup - experiment with it during a few different scenarios and get used to it - so playing with it becomes like second nature. The reason I am telling you this is because if you sit down and do some super complex setup you'll overwhelm yourself when you go into panic mode.
If you're some place that's somewhat difficult and you make a mistake or an extra mob or two agros you - your emotions are going to overthrow your brain and you're going to panic as you forget what is where and what's going on. It's a completely normal human reaction and it's one you should try your hardest to avoid because we don't want to get discouarged and throw in the towel.
Continue to the third guide in my Isboxing series: Advanced Interface Setup